The Setup » [lashton] √

2.0

Luke hadn't seen Ashton for months. They had slipped seamlessly out of one another's lives as though they had been nothing more than acquaintances, and while at this point that was what he had wanted, it left a terrible taste in his mouth. Were they really all Ashton had boiled them down to? Two people who fucked, the friends with benefits without the friends? Because it didn't feel fair that if they were friends, things could just be over like this. But the world kept turning; they both kept hanging out with Michael and Calum because no one had gotten the friends in the divorce. Luke wasn't even sure what Michael thought had gone on, but he rarely brought up Ashton. 

It also didn't help that he felt lonely. He'd admit to that; he hadn't realised how much time they'd spent together, how many little moments they had taken up in one another's lives. There were hours, days, that he didn't know what to do with; who exactly was supposed to fill the spaces? The painting class was the prime example; a spare two hours a week, Wednesday nights were now another night at home alone. The more he ruminated on these thoughts, the more often he came to the same conclusion, this is what break-ups feel like. Which circled him back around to his first thought, that maybe he was allowed to feel more hurt than if an acquaintance had just stopped saying 'hi' on the train. He wanted to know if Ashton felt that way too, if there was a Luke shaped hole in his life. 

This was all to say he'd concluded that he'd been too used to Ashton making plans for them all the time, and he needed to get back in the swing of making plans for himself, so he'd called Michael. 

"Hey man," Michael answered; Luke paused as he pulled the juice from the fridge, surprised by Michael's quick answer. 

"Hey, dude, how's it going? Was wondering if you were free to catch up this afternoon?" 

Michael sighed, "actually, Calum and I are dealing with, with Ashton shit right now; sorry, we really can't,"

"Oh, yeah, no, I get it; you don't need my help, do you?" Luke wasn't sure why he offered, part of his desperately not wanting to be taken up on it and the other needing to know what was going on with Ashton. Was he okay? Surely he wasn't already having relationship problems with Emma. 

"No, I think that'd just be too much right now," he said gently. 

Luke let out a sigh of relief, "good, okay, I'll talk to you tomorrow?"

"Yeah, I'll call you," he promised, but there was a distracted air to his voice. 

"Okay, love you, bye," 

"Love you too." 

He tried not to think about it for the rest of the day, busying himself with running errands and more cleaning; his apartment had never been as clean as it was post-Ashton. 

But when the inevitable happened, and he had a moment alone with his thoughts, he once again started to wonder about Ashton's life. The assumptions he's made that he realised were just that, assumptions; he didn't know about his parents or his siblings. How long he and Emma had been together, and if she was his first love, his heart ached because he hadn't even realised how much he'd been holding back from asking. And this was the icing on the cake; what was the 'Ashton problem'? What state was his life in? Because Luke realised he didn't actually know enough about him to guess. 

So naturally, a week later, he had to try and bring it up with Calum and Michael. 

"Didn't think I was going to hear back from you guys after the Ashton crisis," he laughed, passing them their mugs of coffee. They shared a look between the two of them, and Luke knew he hadn't been quite as subtle as he'd hoped, "Oh, okay, I see how it's going to be," he tried to keep the bitterness from his voice and punctuate it with a friendly eye roll, but it felt like it fell flat. 

"You of all people know we- I have learnt not to meddle," Calum said almost too seriously, "we don't tell him about you when he asks either." The conversation moved away with a few deliberate questions from Michael, and it was as though he'd never mentioned Ashton in the first place. 

But all Luke could think for the rest of the day was, 'he asks about me?' which made him feel as though he'd made no progress in getting over Ashton. 

 

Hey! Trying to keep on top of updating, but just all depends on how much time I have!